Nana Agata, the old nursemaid at her side, stepped forward. Her rosary beads clicked once against each other as her fingers tightened around them, and then she let them fall against her chest. "Mrs. Enzo Moretti, bearing children for your husband is a wife's most basic duty. You can't conceive yourself, haven't produced a single child in years, and now our mistress carries the heir's flesh and blood. You ought to be down on your knees in gratitude, welcoming her through those gates with full ceremony."
"She's delicate. The young master never lets anyone cause our mistress the slightest distress. You stand there ignoring her, leaving her to kneel on the pavement outside the compound. If something happens to the baby because of you, can you bear that responsibility?"
Whispers rippled through the gathered crowd along the iron gates. I signaled Rosa to draw back the tinted window, then fixed a cold stare on the beautiful woman kneeling on the asphalt below. "How far along are you?"
Gianna answered with a demure blush. "This humble woman was taken in by the heir nine months ago. The child in my womb is eight months along."
I looked at her with undisguised contempt. "So for nine months, the heir hasn't brought you inside the compound. Why is that? Is your background too shameful to speak of? Or is the child not his?"
"If he truly treasured you, why would he keep you hidden away as a secret mistress?"
The crowd murmured in agreement. It was a fair point. If a man truly cherished a woman, he would have brought her home to the Family and given her a proper place long ago. Why wait until she was nearly due?
Gianna's eyes brimmed over, and she wept aloud. "Only because Gianna had to observe three years of mourning for her late father and could not marry during that time. That is the only reason it has been delayed. Gianna's virtue is beyond reproach. I am not that kind of woman."
"Why must you humiliate me, my lady? Is it simply because I come from a poor family that I must be a woman of loose morals? What do you take ordinary women like us for?"
"She's right. This is too much."
"Just because she's the heir's wife, she thinks she can look down on everyone?"
"So high and mighty, and she can't even give him a son. The heir ought to dissolve the marriage and be done with it."